Girls soccer: St. Charles North to play for PepsiCo title again

The St. Charles North girls soccer team continued to roll through the competition in defense of its PepsiCo Showdown crown on Thursday night with a 6-1 win in the semifinals over visiting Libertyville.

The North Stars will look to make it back-to-back titles on Saturday at Schaumburg when they face Wheaton Warrenville South. North improved to 8-0-1 overall.

"The girls take a nice approach to every game," North coach Brian Harks said. "They don't look past the right now and are in a constant pursuit to get better."

Seniors Halley Rydberg and Gia Wahlberg resumed their spirited battle for the North Stars' lead in goals. Each had a pair in the win over Libertyville keeping Rydberg ahead with 13 goals to Wahlberg's 12.

"It's a great friendly competition they have going on with one another," North coach Brian Harks said. "It's one of the things I really love about this team. They are always pushing each other to be better."

Rydberg opened the scoring on a penalty kick goal with 28:25 to play in the first half.

"Gia set that up by making a strong run up the middle and then getting me the ball," Rydberg said. "She draws a lot of attention when she has the ball and forces other teams into making mistakes."

Wahlberg followed with a goal just over 4 minutes later to make it 2-0. A goal from Sarah Andrey and another from Wahlberg closed out an impressive first half that saw the North Stars outshoot Libertyville 12-1 and head to halftime with a 4-0 lead.

"Our intensity was high right from the start," Rydberg said. "We had really strong defensive pressure and really good spacing up the field."

Wahlberg went on to score the North Stars' final goal on a nifty move between two defenders and then a kick into the upper right hand corner while sliding to the ground.

Chloe Netzel also had a goal in the second half for the North Stars.

"I liked a lot of things we did out there today," Harks said. "What we like about being in this tournament it has that playoff type atmosphere. Each game has a little more value because each team is playing for some thing. Libertyville is a tough team that played hard the whole way despite the score and I liked the way we kept battling them."

Alex Houser scored the Wildcats' only goal on a penalty kick with 24:30 to play.